Part of the Certified Public Manager program involves the completion of a personal development project. My selected project is to prepare a series of lectures to my fellow managers about basic managerial concepts. These series of posts are intended to document my progress in that endeavor. This report pertains to a presentation made on 2/10/14.
SMART Employee Assignments.
In beginning this series on basic managerial principles for presentation to the public works management team, I chose to present the simple acronym SMART as a tool for assigning employee tasks.
As an introduction, I noted that I had been fortunate to receive some recent formal managerial training and thought it would be helpful to have the chance to share some of those insights with our team. Additionally, since we were not in a period of employee evaluations, this would be a someone non-threatening time to introduce this particular subject.
The 5 principles to consider when making employee assignments are to make your instructions Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-constrained.
I was surprised and pleased with the groups willingness to dialogue further on the subject. We had some good interaction about the difficulty in the past of implementing any such specific requirements when the managers do not feel they have the actual authority to back up their actions.
Subsequent to the meeting I had some informal discussion with the Department Director who thought the content, length, and discussion worked very well for the group. It seems this endeavor is off to a favorable start and I am looking forward to continuing the effort.
Jason, I am pleased for your initial success in launching your personal focused project. By choosing a tool recognized by many professionals but have not had an opportunity to practice or implemente it in the workplace was a good decision. I am looking forward to learning more if this tool is useful in assigning employee tasks - Lisa.
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